It seems that the true nature of MeeGo has not really been understood by many, or if it is, people still like to create wrong kind of fuss, and use the name MeeGo in wrong way.

In very simple words; please do not mix MeeGo and Nokia productized software !

1. MeeGo is open source project.

2. Nokia as founding member of MeeGo project is using N900 as the ARM reference platform of MeeGo at the moment. This means that we have an active project that focuses to MeeGo hardware adaptation for N900.

( 1. and 2. together actually mean, that there will be MeeGo for N900, if someone is interested .. )

The goal of that project is to open as much N900 specifig drivers as possible in MeeGo scope. Our work is currently well supported by many internal and external people, so in fact we have much larger project team than what is described in our wiki page. Based on that I am very confident to say that MeeGo on N900 will be more open than Maemo has been so far, and it will truly be an open source mobile os in N900.

From the wiki you can find information how MeeGo runs, and will run on N900. There are also links to mailing lists, IRC channels, code repositories & all. On the other words, N900 hardware adaptation project is an open project already, as well as the whole MeeGo project will soon be.

MeeGo project is preparing to launch 1.0 release in May, and after that continue development towards 1.1 release. May release will NOT contain mobile UX yet, but it is expected to be added to development versions soon after 1.0 release.

In N900 HW adaptation there is 2 problematic components that we are NOT planning to open as such; the other is BME, battery management entity from Nokia, and the other is OpenGLES implementation from SGX. You can use the device without openGLES, if you don't care about HW accelerated 3D features. Without the BME the device is practically useless.

(Fully functional MeeGo images containing those closed components will also be provided, thanks for asking..)

The reasoning of that situation has been discussed at least in meego-devel mailing list and in N900 hardware adaptation IRC meetings. For BME we will try to find a way to enable open source activity around it, if there are interested people to work on that. Most likely, Nokia as company will not be able participate to that kind of open activity if it will start.

This thread is meant for discussion around MeeGo hardware adaptation for N900, as much as you want to discuss about that in maemo.org. However, I would recommend to switch towards meego.com resources, and participate to technical work there.

We are also pretty busy with the said work at the moment, so please bear us if you don't get complete answers to your questions in short time.

Br,
//Harri

Last edited by harrihakulinen; 2010-05-25 at 11:36.

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Is there any possibility that ,someday..., we will have a fully working meego including BME and GPU support?

Of course there will be fully functional MeeGo also for N900.

There will be several images available, also one including fully functional BME and GPU support. Those are just included as closed components.

Most Linux distributions contain some closed components to support different kinds of hardware, and I expect that those kind of limited closed components will be available in some MeeGo images as well.

ps. MeeGo 1.0 will be bit limited in N900, as we are just porting many N900 specifig drivers for new kernels. But we will improve all the time.

Br,
//Harri

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Thanks Harri, for the refreshing "no-bull$hit" and "no-beating-around-the-bushes" straight answers. That's all anyone can ask for: one simple answer to the question every (non developer) has been asking: Will there be a community installable version of Meego for the N900?

To which you just answered "yes", so thank you for that. Let's just all stop the rumors and disinfo (that internet citizens love to call FUD) and just point straight back to Harri's message in the future. There WILL be a Meego image that we can all install on the N900.

Most Linux distributions contain some closed components to support different kinds of hardware, and I expect that those kind of limited closed components will be available in some MeeGo images as well.

But this causes many problems too.

For example, ATI considered some of their previous cards as legacy. As a result decent 3D acceleration is not accessible to people with the latest version of XORG and the Linux kernel.
Sure there are open source equivalents but the 3D performance is dreadful compared to the ATI binaries.

Similar thing with WIFI drivers too.

One of the original strengths of a Linux-based system is that it works on an enormous amount of hardware.
Closed source binaries are receding this benefit.

I understand the MeeGo team are working hard and doing a great job - I'm very, very grateful for that.

Thank you Harri for these answers! I have read tons of marketing-bullsht from Nokia people where they try to say much but eventually manage to say nothing, basically: "We have foundation and this is amazing, this is amazing, this is open source OMG". I do not say names but just read blogs, watch videos and of course talk.maemo.

This is exactly kind of communication from Nokia what IMO this community needs more so that we can truly to establish good link between Nokia and maemo.org.

To which you just answered "yes", so thank you for that. Let's just all stop the rumors and disinfo (that internet citizens love to call FUD) and just point straight back to Harri's message in the future. There WILL be a Meego image that we can all install on the N900.

Does that sound like they are officially going to support the N900 with Meego? There might be an image, but it won't be a Nokia image.

Personally, I don't care if it's a nokia image or meego.com image.
As long there will be a meego image, I can install on my N900, which will allow me to install apps from repos, ovi store, make calls, play games and enjoy the nokia meego UI, i'll be satisfied.
Who know, maybe I'll even have 3g video calls!